In Israel, the American aide denies that there is a break in the Gaza war
Days after President Biden said Israel was losing support for its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the president’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday downplayed disagreements between the two allies after meetings with Israel’s top leaders.
“We are not here to tell anyone, ‘You have to do X, you have to do Y,’” Mr. Sullivan told reporters in Tel Aviv, the latest Biden administration envoy to visit Israel to discuss the war .
His comments came on the same day the Israeli military said its soldiers had accidentally killed three Israeli hostages in what it described as an “active combat zone.” During fighting in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, troops “misidentified three Israeli hostages as a threat,” the army said in a statement. “As a result, the troops shot at them and killed them.”
The army said it realized the mistake during checks in the area and “suspicion arose about the identity of the deceased.”
The military identified the three murdered Israelis as Alon Shamriz, Yotam Haim and Samer Talalka; all three were kidnapped during the October 7 Hamas-led attack that sparked the war.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the killings “an unbearable tragedy” and praised the “brave fighters committed to the sacred mission of returning our hostages, even at the cost of their lives.”
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, expressed “deep sadness” and said the military was investigating the event.
On Saturday, relatives of the slain hostages will discuss the “terrible disaster,” said Liat Bell Sommer, spokeswoman for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents those kidnapped on Oct. 7 and their relatives.
The Israeli army also said on Friday that it had recovered the bodies of two soldiers And an event planner who were kidnapped and held captive in Gaza on October 7. The hostages were identified as Cpl. Nik Beiser, 19; Sergeant Ron Sherman, 19; and Elia Toledano, 28. The military provided no details about how the three men died or where their remains were found.
As the Israeli military has come under strong criticism for its widespread use of unguided munitions – “indiscriminate bombing” in Mr Biden’s words – and the huge number of civilian casualties it has caused, gaps exist in the prosecution of the war between Israel and the United States, its strongest backer, have become more prominent in recent days.
Gaza health officials have said nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began more than two months ago.
On Thursday, Biden administration officials said they wanted Israel to end its massive ground and air campaign in Gaza within weeks and move to more targeted operations against Hamas.
Israeli officials said it would take months of fighting to drive Hamas out of Gaza.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Mr. Sullivan also met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday and discussed the renewal of the unpopular Palestinian government, which Biden administration officials hope will help will play in Gaza after the removal of Hamas.
Mr. Sullivan told reporters ahead of his meeting with Mr. Abbas that the two would also “discuss efforts to promote stability in the West Bank” and crack down on attacks on Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers. However, he declined to say exactly what Palestinian changes the United States wanted to see.
“It will be up to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority to go through the kinds of steps they need to take to reform and update the authority for the situation we face today,” Mr. Sullivan said.
Israeli forces and civilians have killed 276 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem since Hamas’s surprise attack on Oct. 7 sparked full-blown war, according to the United Nations.
During their meeting, Mr. Abbas called for an immediate end to Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which he called “genocide,” according to a statement from the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA. Mr Abbas also said there is no alternative to a two-state solution to the conflict, the statement said.
Mr. Sullivan on Friday declined to publicly discuss a timetable for the end of the war in Gaza, but said there was “no contradiction” between saying the fighting would last for months and that during that period there would be a “transition from war”. high-intensity operations to more targeted operations.”
It appeared that Mr. Sullivan had won at least one concession from Israeli leaders during his trip. He said in a statement that Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, informed him on Friday that Israel would open its border at the Kerem Shalom crossing to aid shipments directly to Gaza, something the government had opposed.
It was unclear to what extent the opening of the border post would speed the delivery of aid to Gaza, where United Nations officials have described scenes of malnutrition bordering on famine.
“What we need today is not just 100 trucks or 200 lorries – we need a meaningful, large-scale, uninterrupted and unconditional flow of basic goods to the Gaza Strip,” Philippe Lazzarini, the director of the UN agency that assists Palestinians, told reporters. , to reporters. Thursday in Geneva.
Gaza, he added, was “not really a habitable place anymore.”
UN facilities in Gaza have been hit by munitions “directly or indirectly” 150 times since the start of the war, he said, and 135 UN staff have been killed.
An Al Jazeera cameraman reporting on the aftermath of airstrikes on a UN school sheltered in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was killed in an attack on Friday. Al Jazeera saidthe latest in a series of journalist casualties during the war.
Nearly 70 days after the October 7 attacks that sparked the war, Israelis are beginning to consider how to commemorate the victims of the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year history. A new installation in a hangar at the Tel Aviv fairgrounds tries to use artifacts to recreate some of the essence of the Tribe of Nova festival in Re’im, southern Israel, where dozens of ravers were killed.
According to Israeli authorities, at least 360 festival-goers were killed that day – almost a third of the 1,200 people killed in the Hamas-led attack. At the exhibition, tables labeled ‘Lost and Found’ were laden with items taken from the site, including rows of shoes, glasses, sunglasses, bags and car and house keys.
The attacks left Israelis with a heightened sense of insecurity, a feeling that has only become more acute with near-daily rocket fire along Israel’s border with Lebanon and the vow by the Iran-backed Houthi militia that controls northern Yemen to stop any attack to block. ship sailing to Israeli shipping facilities in the Red Sea.
On Friday, two container shipping companies said they had stopped their ships from transiting the Red Sea after attacks on ships in the region.
German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said in a statement on Friday that one of its ships, Al Jasrah, was attacked while traveling close to the coast of Yemen. It said it would suspend all container traffic through the Red Sea until Monday.
Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk also said it would also divert all container shipments through the Red Sea after what the company called a “near miss” on Thursday and a new attack on Friday.
The US military, which has warships in the Red Sea that have intercepted missiles fired by Houthi rebels, has ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to remain in the Mediterranean for several more weeks.
The Pentagon deployed the Ford and its strike group to the eastern Mediterranean the day after the October 7 attacks.
Reporting was contributed by Aaron Bokserman, Isabel Kershner, John Yoon, Gaya Gupta, Johnatan Reiss And Efrat Livni.